Rower combats lower back pain with new treatment

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A competitive rower in high school and university, Jennifer Mayberry began to experience pain in her lower back during her late teens.

“Chronic lower back issues are common occurrence with people who row for a long period of time,” says Mayberry, now 37.

“What happened was, I’d damaged and stretched out the tendons that connect my pelvis to my spine. They had become so loose I had repeat episodes of acute incidents, where I’d throw my back out so badly I’d be stuck on the couch for five days at a time, or I couldn’t walk for a couple of hours.”

She tried massage therapy, physiotherapy, and chiropractic treatments, “mostly for pain relief. And those worked, but only temporarily.”

Mayberry also did “tons of core and glute strengthening for stabilization.” But no matter how strong her core was, it didn’t help the fundamental issue.

“The tendons connecting the major pieces of my body were so stretched out and loose that there was nothing I could do about it,” she said. “Tendons don’t heal themselves. Once they’re damaged, they’re damaged.”

About five years ago, while on an eco-retreat in Hope, Mayberry heard about prolotherapy. The municipal environmental manager started reading more about the treatment and found herself at the office of Vancouver naturopath Heidi Rootes.

“She was shocked at how loose my pelvis was. It turned and moved in ways it should not.”

Prolotherapy involves the injection of an irritant, often a sugar-water solution, in the vicinity of the injured tendon or ligament where it attaches to the bone. This causes inflammation, which serves as a stimulant attracting cells that produce collagen in the reparative process of healing the inflamed tendon/ligament. The new collagen fibres laid down on the injured tendon contract over time, and re-establish the integrity of the previously stretched ligament.

“I do prolotherapy,” said Dr. Mark Frobb, an orthopedic MD at the Chronic Back Pain Clinic in South Surrey. “It’s a very useful therapy. But it has a very narrow spectrum of use.”

Specifically, prolotherapy works on what he calls “dysfunctional vertebral movement disorder” to “re-establish the normal integrity of the ligamentous structures.”

“But somehow, use of prolotherapy got a little out of hand. Essentially, everybody is doing prolo now for all sorts of different situations. Some people think if it hurts, they’ll prolo it.”

Frobb said that, theoretically, prolotherapy could work in a case like Mayberry’s, providing the diagnosis was made by “someone skilled in osteopathic medicine.”

“It can be a very efficacious treatment,” Frobb said. “If she feels fine, then that was the correct diagnosis, and the treatment was good.”

“The sessions aren’t terribly enjoyable,” Mayberry said. “But they were incredibly effective. I had those treatments four or five years ago and I haven’t thrown my back out since.”

Mayberry said that Rootes “mostly focused on the tendons that connect my pelvis to my spine, but she also did a lot of work on the tendons around my pelvis.”

Mayberry also receives prolotherapy treatments for a dislocated rib.

“A rib in my upper left side would pop out five or six times a year. It was quite painful, and chronic. The chiropractic treatments were temporary in relief.”

She said she hasn’t had trouble with the rib for around eight months.

“It’s painful to do, and it’s not exactly cheap,” Mayberry said of her treatments, which cost her about $225 a session. “But for three or four treatments, to not be laid out on my back for a week at a time, once or twice a year — obviously it was worth it.”

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Rower combats lower back pain with new treatment

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